


Takeru Homura's Relaxation Time

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, F/M, One Shot, Relaxation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24930433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: A brief one-shot I wrote for fun about Takeru Homura aka Soulburner, including his banter with Flame when no one is around, his relaxation time, and how he thinks of his childhood friend Kiku and the home he grew up in.
Relationships: Implied Homura Takeru/Kamishirakawa Kiku - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Takeru Homura's Relaxation Time

The heat, the steam, the liquid around his body so hot he felt like he was being boiled alive. It consumed each atom of Takeru Homura from head to toe, until he couldn’t tell if he was soaked with sweat or water. Moisture dripped down his face, his body sunk deeper into the porcelain bathtub, and his mind began to melt away into nothingness. Takeru closed his eyes, a deep serenity overcoming him. 

“Hurry up, we need to get going.”

Aaaaaaand the moment was gone. 

Opening his left eye but leaving the right one closed as if he were frozen in a wink; Takeru peered across the room and over at Flame, the digital humanoid perched on the black-and-gold Duel Disk. Flame’s slender legs were dangling off the ledge, impatiently kicking at the bathroom counter.

“Give me a few more minutes,” Takeru uttered, sinking further into the water. 

“You already washed your body, plus you conditioned and shampooed your hair. What else do you humans even need to clean?”

“My mind.” Takeru’s silver gaze diverted from Flame to the thin wooden clock to his left and above his Duel Disk. The object read 20:04. 

“Preposterous. I’ve never heard of a human needing to clean their brain,” Flame’s frustration was increasing, his form beginning to sizzle and burn, much like it did when the two fought BitBoot in VRAINS. After a moment, Flame scratched his chin. “That’s not even possible, is it, Soulburner?”

“I’m not literally cleaning my mind, but metaphorically so.” Takeru closed his eye. He had plenty of time, Flame was just being stubborn and difficult today. 

“That’s ridiculous,” Flame responded, “and a waste of our valuable time. C’mon now, we need to help Playmaker and his partner search for Bohman.”

“Hey, Flame!” Takeru said, a bit more sternly. “Everything’s going to be okay. Alright? I’ve had a long couple of days, what with school, dueling, and searching for Bohman in VRAINS. I could really use this, alright?”

When Flame didn’t initially say anything, Takeru reached his hand out. “Please,” he pleaded. 

Flame sighed, the tips of his hair (or, whatever that stuff was) lighting up slightly. “Ugh, fine,” he said. “You have 10 minutes.”

Takeru scoffed. “You’re such a brat,” the duelist said, a smile on his face.

__________  
“I don’t know why you have to be so overbearing,” Takeru told Flame a few minutes later, as he walked out of the bathroom. Once he opened the door, steam came pouring out, crashing onto the floor like waves on the coast. He had a baby blue towel draped around his waistline, the edge of the towel coming just above his ankles, and a second black towel he was using to dry off his hair. 

“I’m not overbearing, you just need to be reeled in,” Flame told him. 

“I don’t need to be reeled in!” Takeru shouted. “You don’t understand, you’re just an AI. Humans have needs. We get exhausted, fatigued. We need time to relax and decompress.”

“Decompress?” Flame asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Takeru paused for a moment, putting together a response. “Uh, it’s synonymous with relaxing. It basically means to calm down and pull yourself together.”

Flame said nothing. Takeru walked over to his bedroom, dropping the towels and throwing on a pair of green shorts and a light red t-shirt. He checked the clock. It was now almost 20:20, and he told Playmaker he’d meet him in the Red Light district of VRAINS at 20:30. 

“We should probably get ready,” Takeru said, and out of the corner of his peripheral vision he saw Flame roll his eyes, as if to nonverbally say ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.’  
Takeru walked out of the bedroom in three small steps; his apartment was atrociously cramped, and having a small AI companion barking orders at him didn’t exactly help with the living arrangement, but still, it was Takeru’s home. He enjoyed the space he got, and it was a hell of a lot better than living with his grandparents. 

_God, when was the last time I thought about them?_ he realized as he sat down on his tiny futon, grabbing the LINK VRAINS headset from the right cushion. _I should really call them soon,_ he concluded as he turned on the device. 

Truth be told, Takeru had a...complicated relationship with his hometown. He vastly preferred living in Den City, where he went to a great school; lived a few blocks away from several major establishments; and was beginning to develop his own friendship circle with some of the other kids his age, like Yusaku and Aoi. And, as a plus, he was without any real adult supervision. Not to say he was some kind of a bad kid (though he was quite the delinquent back in the day, and a real bitch to both his grandparents). Things were different: he did all of his homework, got to school on time, always made sure to never stay out too late, and he was even looking at getting a part-time job after he settled things with SOL. 

He looked back at that hometown with mixed feelings. That town reminded him of when he was a kid, alone and sad and angry at the world. He took it out on everyone around him, and years later he looked back at that time with shame. But he missed his grandparents and above all, he missed Kiku. Sure, his grandpa was pretty overbearing and a real thorn in the ass sometimes; and Kiku was always telling Takeru to get to school, but he found his thoughts lingering to them every now and again. 

As he started to put his headset on, he gave a quick glance at the kitchen table. There, sitting on the table for nearly two weeks now, was a letter to Kiku he kept trying to start. He’d been meaning to write to her ever since he got to Den City. She always told him that she thought writing letters was a more personal act than sending a quick text or hopping on to video chat, and Takeru thought it would be a cute gesture to honor his childhood friend. 

But every time he picked up a pencil, sat down, and tried to write, the words just...wouldn’t come. After all, what would he even say to her? ‘Hey, Kiku, how’s it going? I’m a cyber vigilante working with VRAINS’ two best duelists to take down a corrupt mega-corporation and a terrorist network. Also, did you know that human-like artificial intelligence capable of speech is real and I have one living with me. Crazy! Anyway, how’re your folks?’

Yeah, that’d be pretty ridiculous. Did Kiku even know what VRAINS was? She was always a decade or two behind in technology. Last time he saw her, she was still using a Nokia phone. 

If he did write to her, he’d have to leave out anything related to his activities as Soulburner. She was always the first to oppose his thuggish lifestyle back home, and he thought any hints that he was the up-and-coming vigilante “Soulburner” would not sit well. Best case scenario, he might lose the trust of his closest and oldest friend. Worst case scenario, she’d report him to SOL and the authorities and his days as a hero of VRAINS would be finished. 

But on the other hand, there was something about straight up lying to her, even by omission, that felt so awful to Takeru. He was always a simple man who lived life honestly; even when he was a thug back home, he was never subtle about what he was doing. The idea of deceiving Kiku, even in letter form, made him want to throw up. 

So he just...didn’t do it. He never wrote to her. He kept putting it off for months. ‘Oh, I’ll just call her when I get settled in,’ he initially thought. ‘Oh, I should probably wait ‘till my grades improve,’ he decided. And when he started getting A’s, he changed it again to ‘Oh, I’ll just call her when I have a day off school, so I won’t have any distractions.’

Now, he was settling on ‘I’ll just write Kiku when I defeat Bohman,’ and a part of him secretly hoped that day would never come. What would she do? Would she laugh and call him an idiot? Slap him in the face? Tell his folks? There’s also the high probably she would just ask something stupid, like “What the hell is a VRAINS?”

Honestly, if it ever did come to it, he thought that telling Kiku would work best after defeating Bohman. These last few months, he’d been one thousand percent focused on defeating SOL and their allies; if he got reported to the police as Soulburner after all that happened, well, so be it. By that point, he’d have achieved his goal and then some. 

Flame, noticing how deep in thought his partner was, snapped his fingers. “Oi, Soulburner, what’re you doing?”

Takeru shook his head. “Sorry, sorry, you’re right.”

 _Now’s not the time to think of Kiku, or my hometown, or being arrested_ , he told himself. _Now is a time for action._

He put on the headset, and within seconds, he is in VRAINS. Takeru felt his nerves hooking up to the server, and he felt the touch of the wind on his skin, as he soared through a barrage of colors and a bombardment of sights. He closed his eyes, taking in the wonderful, but brief sensation of flight, before he rocketed out of a portal in Lower VRAINS. 

Ever since SOL rebooted the servers with the New VRAINS, they’d made several changes to the horizon and sky; notably, the fact that the times were now synched with Den City. The sun was just starting to set as Takeru 

It’d be suicide for someone was high profile as him to end up in central VRAINS, where he’d no doubt be recognized in an instant. Whenever he, Playmaker and Blue Angel (or was it Blue Girl now? No, wait, it was Blue Maiden. Good, Blue Girl was a stupid name) had to meet somewhere, they always chose this area. The lower layers of VRAINS had barely any Duel Circuits, item shops or travel paths down here, so it was a perfect place for a hacker, a vigilante and a Charisma Duelist to meet without interruption. 

Soulburner checked the time on his Duel Disk, and saw that it was 20:27. Realizing he was still several minutes away, he immediately broke into a sprint, cutting through the alleys to avoid being seen.  
He arrived at the location right as his clock ticked and turned to 20:30. It was an old church, with rock-hard roots sprouting out of the ground in strange shapes, and the mural on the window (which Takeru imagined must have been a beautiful sight at one point or another) was totally shattered, and shards of glass lined the ground. Aoi told him one time that this was the place where her brother first encountered Yusaku and Revolver, the leader of the Knights of Hanoi. While he’d never understand it personally, Takeru could tell that this place was immensely important to both Aoi and Yusaku.  
He walked in through the busted front door, and found Aoi sitting down on one of the roots, twiddling her thumbs. She was in her latest Avatar, one with wavy hair light blue in color. Gone were the flowy white dresses she wore as Blue Angel, or the white-and-blue t-shirts and short shorts she wore as Blue Girl; now, she wore a black leggings with pink highlights and black-and-white sleeveless waistcoat.  
Leaning against the nearby wall, Yusaku looked up, his green eyes piercing into the depths of Takeru’s soul. He looked...exactly the same. 

“Ah, right on time,” Fujiki said. “Nice of you to join us.”

“We were almost late because he insisted on taking a bath and then zoned out for 10 minutes,” Flame blurted out. 

Aoi giggled at the random comment. “You two are so weird,” she told them. 

“Anyways, let’s focus,” Yusaku told the other three. “I have a plan on how to lure out Bohman, but I’ll need help from all of you.”


End file.
